Rear-end collisions on our highways are a major cause of serious injury. The incidence of rear-ends collisions has risen rapidly as our highway systems get increasingly congested. Drivers have been admonished and given a variety of guidelines for following distance; however, these have done little to alter driving habits. Drivers on the highway are often jockeying for position, and some feel that when attempting to follow at a “safe distance”, the space just quickly fills with one or more vehicles. Unfortunately, when vehicles closely follow one another there is often insufficient time for a driver to respond to a situation and come to a stop prior to rear-ending the vehicle ahead. In existing vehicles, drivers are unable to gain sufficient information relating to the action of drivers and conditions farther up the road. Drivers may watch brake lights come on and go off again as they try to see what is occurring farther up the road. Often the view up ahead is obscured, or completely blocked, by the vehicle ahead, leaving the driver reliant on being extremely alert and having fast reaction times. Unfortunately, drivers are also relying on luck which can run out at any time when the person ahead unexpected “slams” on the brakes. Under actual driving conditions, by the time a driver recognizes a “situation” they often have insufficient time to slow, or stop, in order to prevent colliding with another vehicle. Coming to a stop from highway speeds can require 3-4 seconds during which over 200 hundred feet of highway may be traversed. At highway speeds, every 1/100th of a second that a driver delays in applying their brakes can translate to another foot of highway. The energy for these additional feet is often absorbed by the rear end of another vehicle. In many cases significant injuries may be prevented by decreasing reaction times by a few hundred milliseconds.
Numerous concepts have been considered for reducing rear-ends collisions. The thought of computer controlled automobiles have been around since the advent of microcomputers. Various prior arts have disclosed traffic merging warning systems. U.S. Pat. No. 8,068,036 B2 discloses a system that alerts the operator of a vehicle, when the operator is not in compliance with an intersection signal condition; i.e., the system intelligently determines if a vehicle is traveling at a speed that would make the vehicle in non-compliance with the intersection signal condition and notifies the driver of such non-compliance. U.S. Pat. No. 6,223,125 B1 discloses a collision avoidance system to prevent collisions by monitoring intersection traffic and intelligently controlling traffic lane perturbations to prevent intersection collisions. U.S. Pat. No. 7,990,286 B2 discloses a vehicle positioning system that receives location codes from passive tags positioned along a road system and reports these location codes to a central traffic management service. US Patent Application No. 20050040970 A1 discloses a one way information system for detecting environmental traffic conditions and notifying drivers of said conditions.
What is needed is a system, device and method for alerting drivers of oncoming and merging traffic in more efficient and effective ways. As will be seen from the subsequent description, the preferred embodiments of the present invention overcome shortcomings of the prior art.